AGENT PROVOCATEUR
Everyone Loves Bank Holidays?
H
ow many bank holidays do we need in the month’s of April/May? If like me the more bank holidays you have the better, they offer the best opportunity to sit in the garden with a glass of ‘vino colapso’ and think about all those
holidaymakers and Sunday drivers clogging up the roads, getting hot and bothered and just for once I am not! But for some of you it means manning the shop in the hope that you will be busy with customers to make up for the onerous days where the till doesn’t ring – or worse still where you open the till to reimburse a return from the float. Take heart, there are 5 bank holidays during these 2 months and hopefully this will bring out the punters to buy in their droves (don’t forget that agents, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all have one thing in common, we all want to sell shoes and pleased it is your turn to rush round like mad things), but I do know what it is like to be stuck in a shop and looking out at everyone else having a jolly old time on a bank holiday without a care in the world, more particularly when you are young and your mates are all off, or simply employed and having to do the busy time when perhaps your kids are having fun in the garden with the childminder. Sorry, if you are a proprietors of a business, then no complaints please.
It
is your business and hopefully your profit, and you just have to accept that the busy time is when the holidays start and work your calendar likewise. Let’s be honest, when you are ordering the new BMW or flying somewhere prohibitively expensive and exotic whilst the rest of us scuttle round in the wind and rain, you will know it is worth it, so maybe you should just concentrate on that thought and give your staff as much kindness and consideration you can to encourage them to turn every ‘browser’ into a ‘customer’. Interest rates are rising fast and we are in danger of price increases doing damage to our inflation the very inflation that the government want to keep low, so how does this affect our retail prices on shoes? I know that many of you have had to increase prices due to higher cost price and this is due to higher material and transport costs for the supplier….the dreaded chain effect. Costs have to be passed on, and believe me the companies I deal with are doing their damndest to keep prices as low as possible. What they do expect though is for retailers to pay their bills on time because non-payment also has a knock-on effect, and suppliers have a much stricter time parameter to pay factories – no money, no shoes. I have just been informed that I will now have to pay the highest price for my heating oil in two and a half years because of the disaster in Japan and the crisis in Libya and the Far East. Amazing how quickly the costs here have been passed down, methinks one of the more opportunistic industries making money whilst they can and blaming the overall financial state of affairs.
I remember an old
boss of mine many years ago saying that if you increase prices by a little every season no one will notice, but if you increase prices once every 2 years (4 seasons) everyone will be up in arms about it and say these are now prohibitive as they are to expensive – very true, but then we are all chasing the last penny.
It doesn’t help that our
industry always gets quoted by the Financial Times Index when the rates change and prices go up. Have you noticed it is always clothing and footwear that gets the biggest mention, putting the idea in consumers minds not to buy any more? Food also gets a mention, but we have to buy that.
Let’s be honest, when you are ordering the new BMW or flying somewhere prohibitively expensive and exotic whilst the rest of us scuttle round in the wind and rain, you will know it is worth it, so maybe you should just concentrate on that thought and give your staff as much kindness and consideration you can to encourage them to turn every ‘browser’ into a ‘customer’. Interest rates are rising fast and we are in danger of price increases doing damage to our inflation the very inflation that the government want to keep low, so how does this affect our retail prices on shoes?
Hopefully your sandals have arrived instore now and selling like hotcakes, but if you sell men’s footwear did you order many sandals? I can’t seem to find a pair for myself anywhere!! All I want is a comfortable sporty pair that I can wear with short’s (and sock’s – am sure I am old enough now) and not look silly, anyone have a pair of these in-stock (size 9’s to FT office please)? Joking apart with this wonderful hot weather in contrast to last Easter’s lousy rain, I will think of you busily selling sandals, wish you all the joys of spring, whilst I enjoy a nice cold Chablis in my William and Catherine commemorative mug whilst mopping the Hagen Das ice- cream off my chin using my Union Jack serviettes of course….cheers all!
12 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • MAY 2011
www.footweartoday.co.uk
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